Hi guys, a local team of volunteers here in New Zealand, is looking an Android Wear watch to develop a navigation application for a blind person, Kit. Also, possibly for more general use for the visually impaired. Kit likes swimming in the sea, but has difficulty finding his way up the beach back to the entrance of a track that leads to his house. So we are considering using a watch to help him navigate, initially via GPS and magnetometer (so that he can orient in the right direction), then using a BLE proximity beacon for the last part of the journey (as it needs higher accuracy than GPS to find the start of the track). Ironically Kit, who was a renown sound engineer on many NZ films, uses hearing aids, which he can't take in the water, so is also effectively deaf when he emerges!
We have never programmed a watch before so have some fundamental questions:
- Is what we want to do achievable using Android Wear? In other words is it possible to develop significant applications that access watch resources including GPS, vibrator, buttons, BLE, magnetometer?
- Is there likely to be sufficient rom/ram to implement a program that does location and compass calculations to guide kit between a series of waypoints? Clearly it depends, but it could be quite a complex programming with floating point calculations.
- Will we effectively be able to take over the user interface to use just keys and tactile feedback from the vibrator?
Clearly the screen will be fairly useless to Kit, and his hearing problem means that tones won't help!
- Will we be able to programme the Bluetooth (smart) functionality for proximity beacon detection?
- Has anything like this been done already? If so, references and contacts would be really helpful.
The watch requires:
Waterproof, as Kit will be wearing it whilst swimming.
Accurate GPS, for initial navigation between waypoints.
Magnetometer, for orientation and course corrections.
Vibration patterns, to communicate with Kit
Key controls, preferable to touch screen (although very coarse touch screen controls might also be useful)
Gyroscope, ideally, for gesture control
Bluetooth (smart), for beacon scanning and proximity detection, for last part of journey (this is critical)
Other comments / views on what we are wanting to achieve would be appreciated.
Best wishes, Ron.
We have never programmed a watch before so have some fundamental questions:
- Is what we want to do achievable using Android Wear? In other words is it possible to develop significant applications that access watch resources including GPS, vibrator, buttons, BLE, magnetometer?
- Is there likely to be sufficient rom/ram to implement a program that does location and compass calculations to guide kit between a series of waypoints? Clearly it depends, but it could be quite a complex programming with floating point calculations.
- Will we effectively be able to take over the user interface to use just keys and tactile feedback from the vibrator?
Clearly the screen will be fairly useless to Kit, and his hearing problem means that tones won't help!
- Will we be able to programme the Bluetooth (smart) functionality for proximity beacon detection?
- Has anything like this been done already? If so, references and contacts would be really helpful.
The watch requires:
Waterproof, as Kit will be wearing it whilst swimming.
Accurate GPS, for initial navigation between waypoints.
Magnetometer, for orientation and course corrections.
Vibration patterns, to communicate with Kit
Key controls, preferable to touch screen (although very coarse touch screen controls might also be useful)
Gyroscope, ideally, for gesture control
Bluetooth (smart), for beacon scanning and proximity detection, for last part of journey (this is critical)
Other comments / views on what we are wanting to achieve would be appreciated.
Best wishes, Ron.
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